


An Unfinished Fight

by fullyajar



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fix-it fic, I fix what the show broke, POV Second Person, despite Lexa's death, honestly it's a hopeful story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-11 00:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10450743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullyajar/pseuds/fullyajar
Summary: Most of all, death is disorienting. It is all too easy to fall into the abyss and let go. But as long as Clarke is in danger, there is no choice but holding on.Canon divergent after S03E07. After Ontari receives the spirit of the commander and ascends, Lexa wages war in her mind to posthumously protect Clarke.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this tumblr post.](http://fullyajar.tumblr.com/post/141829131493/ollraight-reshopgoufa-alyciadayumcareys)
> 
> I started this story immediately following Lexa’s death last year, and picked it up again recently when The 100 came back and reignited my grief and rage over Lexa’s death. Forget anything that happened on the show after S03E07. My version is better, I promise.
> 
>  **Note for the violence:** Though I’m serious about the violence warning, I promise it serves a purpose and that both our loves will be alright in the end. The going is painful and angsty, but there’s a lot of hope in this story too. Clarke only gets seriously physically hurt once or twice (and Lexa does not sit idly by for it, trust me).

Most of all, death is disorienting.

It is blind consciousness in zero gravity and forgetting to breathe from time to time.

It’s strange; you shouldn’t even know what zero gravity is, let alone how it feels, but you do. You _remember._ In death, you remember the spray of sea surf and the swell of waves, even though you never saw the ocean. In death, you know the shame of defeat and deposition at the end of a sword, despite the fact that you stood undefeated in life until the very end. Most impressively, in death, you remember the sight of Earth from space, from zero gravity, and from between the very stars.

The past commanders were waiting for you after all, and although you can’t perceive them in any way your mortal form was accustomed to, you can feel their fondness, regret, and pride in the way they unravel your memories and read the story of your all too short life. Your death is just another lesson learned for them, and your memories are nuggets of wisdom to catalogue for the future generations of commanders, but, in one thing, you are unique. Titus hadn’t been wrong about that. You can feel the past commanders’ confusion as your memories inevitably wind back time and linger in a few singular, precious moments – too few, you’d hoped for so many more – with a girl who spent her whole life with the view of Earth that only now, in death, you can appreciate with her.

You are the only commander that ever fell in love.

 _Hodnes laik kwelnes._ Love is weakness. You hear it in every mind around you like it was a mother’s lullaby from birth, a father’s counsel in childhood, a self-evident, timeless truth. Perhaps the way you died proves it to them – but you were not weak, and they know _that_ just as strongly. You are conundrum to them: the commander that, in life, used peace to stop a war and that, in death, forces two truths – your capacity for love and your strength – to battle. You don’t know which will win that fight; perhaps you don’t care. They all followed their lonely code, and they’re just as dead as you are; at least your life had meaning.

You wish it could have had more. For one blissful hour, you’d thought you’d have a chance – that you’d have time. There is nothing to regret because you weren’t a given a choice, but you can’t find another word for the feeling that sits heavy in what’s left of your soul despite the weightlessness that suspends it.

The other commanders’ memories offer little solace; they can’t tell you how to lighten this burden because not one loved like you did. You wonder how your people ever survived under such unfeeling leadership. You suppose that’s all you were doing, in the end – surviving – before someone showed you life could be about more than that.

You wonder if you are unique in another way, because the other commanders don’t feel… present. You’re in and out most of the time, but you’re there. You drift and you rifle through new and old memories alike, but you _feel_ , deeply. Are you supposed to be holding on like this? Why didn’t they? They’re faded, distant specters never seen or heard, but only perceived by their life’s stories that outlive them, and you’re clearly more than that.

There is one exception: a consciousness so sharp and resilient it took you hours to recover from the first hesitant nudge against it.

You haven’t reached out since; the feeling of weightless reeling and crumbling down of what’s left of your awareness is enough of a deterrent. It – _she_ , perhaps – is a commander, you felt and know that much, but you can’t imagine which one. You met your predecessor before Anya took you as second, but it isn’t her. The others, you never knew. Perhaps the first commander, come to meet the last?

You don’t know, and you drift again. There are some memories that are so easy to fall back to, memories that liven all your waning senses – touch, most of all. The brush of her lips along your throat. The light caress of her fingertips down your back. The squeeze of her fingers laced with yours pressed against the bed you shared.

Oh, Clarke.

The thought of her name tilts the world on its axis without warning and with such violence that the memories shatter to pieces in your mind, and suddenly everything boils down to rage and a lust for blood that’s not your own.

You strike out against it before you know what you’re doing, and _god_ it hurts, but the rage fades – just as the mind of the unknown commander does. You retreat; you’re not strong enough to fight, and you don’t know why you should or why this commander bears you such ill will. You thought your fight was over.

You don’t think the name of the girl you love again.

You feel weaker every day you don’t, and you force her name to become a word on the tip of your tongue, never uttered, never truly thought, but lingering nonetheless, just so that you don’t fade away.

And things start to change.

It happens slowly at first, like the turning of winter to spring, and you almost miss it. But the moments that you’re not drifting become sprinkled with images and sounds and thoughts that are not your own. You see fragments of the hallways of Polis. You hear Titus’s stern voice murmuring your title. You feel the scratch of familiar sheets against your skin. You feel pride, power, and endless ambition – feelings familiar to you, but alien in your current state. The moments flicker in and out of your mind with frustrating irregularity, and you can’t decide whether they should comfort or unsettle you.

One day, you catch a flash of blonde hair, and you think her name before you can stop yourself. The pain and rage are back instantly, and you nearly cower, but the instinct to fight is suddenly just as strong, as though the short glimpse you caught of Clarke gives you strength to stay your course. You push back. The unknown commander does the same, with a brutality and iron will that makes it hard to breathe (do you even need to?). The agony hits again – but you’re not the only one hurting this time, and you hear labored breathing and a grunt of pain before you lose the battle.

It’s the first fight you’ve ever lost, and you’ve ceded it in death, of all things. The irony isn’t lost on you that death should have ended your fight to begin with.

You’re adrift for days this time. You’re blind, deaf, numb, and weightless, and you’re weakened enough that even brushing your thoughts past Clarke’s name don’t bring you back.

Still, it’s the first thing you _do_ feel, _do_ hear, and it’s not your thoughts that give you her name.

“My name is _Clarke._ ”

Her voice rings like a gunshot in the silence that has blanketed your world for days, and you’re jolted back to the here and now with a momentum that makes you dizzy. Her face floats into your vision – someone else’s vision, you know instantly, because Clarke hasn’t looked at you with such venom since you saved her from Azgeda.

“Not anymore.”

The voice hits you like a punch to the gut, and the foreign consciousness with so much rage and disdain for you – for _Clarke_ – falls into place like gravity reclaiming your mind _._

Ontari.

Oh, no.

“I will call you what I like, _natrona,_ ” she says.

Traitor. Your blood boils.

“Who did I betray? You?” Clarke demands, but it lacks fire. You drink in the sight of her, but the taste is bitter. Her eyes are sunken and unfeeling, and her voice cracks like she hasn’t used it in weeks. You ache at the sight; she looks exhausted, hollow, aged years in a matter of days. You’re sure that if she clenched a fist, her hand would shake.

“You are Skaikru. _Ogeda Skaikru laik natrona_.”

Clarke shakes her head and sits down on the bed with a sigh. It takes you too long to realize that the bed and the room around her is the room you offered her for solitude and solace. Now, it’s just the room you died in – the bed you died in, horribly unchanged – and you know the possibility of peace within it perished when you did.

“Right,” Clarke says with a humorless laugh. “Well, excuse me if I’m losing track of my names. Clarke, Princess, _Skaikru, natrona, Wanheda – ”_

“No,” Ontari interjects in a tone neither expecting nor accepting anything but instant obedience. It seems she’s taken up the mantle of commander with a zeal not even your own ascension could likely have rivaled. “There is only one Heda.”

“There is, but it’s not you,” Clarke returns instantly. Her hand tightens on the fur cover below her – on your blood – and you feel stronger when you see a hint of fire in her eyes – a spark ignited by the memory of you. “You will never _be_ Heda.”

“Like Lexa was, you mean?” Ontari shoots back. Your name sounds foreign on her tongue, despite the way her body half feels like your own. She laughs, a sound like sandpaper. “No, I won’t. Lexa was weak. What she felt for you was weakness.” Ontari’s lip curls cruelly, and her eyes flick to the bloody fur that Clarke still clutches. “After all, it killed her in the end, didn’t it?”

Clarke’s face contorts with guilt, and you feel a surge of protective rage at the sight. Clarke is grieving – grieving for _you_ – and you’ll be damned if you stand by and let this pretender twist the knife in her broken heart.

You’ll show her _weakness_.

You focus your thoughts on the girl you love, and ram your mind against Ontari’s as hard as you can.

The image of Clarke on the bed she held you dying in blurs and dims instantly and you succumb under the crushing power of Ontari’s defense – but not before you sense the intense pain that she clutches her head to subdue and see Clarke’s despair turn to confused relief when she staggers from the room.

This time, drifting is different. You are still weightless and lost, and your mind slips along the cracks in your memories like you can’t find a hold on them to bring you back to reality, but now that you know whose mind is there with yours, the visions and sensory flashes fall more easily into place. A meeting of ambassadors. Roan pledging fealty. A feast in your honor – _her_ honor, you correct quickly. You wonder if your people have forgotten you as quickly as it took for the embers of your funeral pyre to burn out. Each day, you grow less disoriented, and you follow the proceedings of your successor’s initiation with slowly increasing lucidity and focus.

One day, a new _natblida_ is brought before her for initiation into training, and it hits you with painful clarity who died to make Ontari Heda. As though the realization breaks the barrier, Ontari’s memories of the Conclave come flooding in, and each moment is more gruesome than the last. You relive them as though it’s your own hand slaughtering fellow acolytes at least six years your – Ontari’s – junior. God, they were so young – children you trained, comforted, cared for. You had hoped you would survive a few more years if only to avoid a Conclave like this, with the odds so uneven and the stakes so dire. Your heart breaks at the last _natblida_ standing, and when he falls, you follow up the image of Ontari’s bloody desecration and demonstration with an attack that you’re sure makes her wish she could sever her own head from her shoulders.

 _Yu gonplei ste odon,_ Aden.

Though your attack severs your hold on the present for another few days, Ontari is far more careful with her memories from then on. You wonder if she senses your presence. Maybe she even gave you access to the memories on purpose, intent on hurting you with the deaths of kids you as good as raised. You cared for them knowing all but one would die – they grew up knowing it as well – but you would never have borne witness to their deaths at each other’s hands. That is the way of your people; commanders rarely lose their title by deposition, with good reason and often by choice, if only to avoid having to suffer through the Conclave.

But if Ontari thought she’d weaken you with grief, she misjudged it. If anything, she opened a door she can’t pull shut again, because you suddenly feel her every thought before she thinks it and her every doubt before she subdues it.

You take advantage, and follow every feeling that she fails to hide from you like you’re picking apart a war rival’s political intelligence.

In the beginning, she thinks often of Clarke, and the thoughts are seeped in disdain and a thirst for vengeance far out of proportion to the threat Clarke poses. It’s as though in the absence of her intended target, Ontari has projected all her hate for you onto the girl you loved. Every thought she has is more ruthless than the last. She considers ransoming her for Arcadia’s surrender – a ransom with grisly proofs of life. She dreams of a public fight to the death to rival your duel with Roan and to establish the dominion of Heda over Wanheda once and for all. A part of her ruminates in more efficient, personally satisfying deaths – a knife to her throat and the thud of her body to the ground of her room-turned-prison. You fear for her, deeply. All the lengths to which you went to protect her in life were undone by the very reason you wanted to protect her in the first place – the fact that you loved her.

However, no matter how merciless the thought, every time Ontari thinks of Clarke, you clamp onto the name of the girl you love like it’s a handhold on Ontari’s senses, and you see through her eyes for hours. She pushes at your mind and tries to wrench you loose, but you hold on without faltering and with enough resistance that it causes her pain to even try, and she has no choice but to either accept your presence or attack in full. The attacks are ruthless, and you scream in silent agony when you’re sent back to zero gravity, but you know that they don’t leave her unscathed either. You’ll suffer it for the chance to hurt her back, and the short glimpses you catch of the world reeling and her groans of pain as she clutches her temples are all the motivation you need to keep latching onto the thought of Clarke when Ontari forgets to shield her mind again.

One day, she does more than think of her, and you hear her name in her voice.

“…one known as Clarke.”

It is followed by a blurry image of her face, and you scramble to find a foothold on the present, if only for the chance to look at the girl you love a second longer.

The image stays, and the throne room, filled to bursting with ambassadors and subordinates, materializes around Clarke’s haggard form. She stands in the center, hands bound in front of her, skin pale, and jaw tight. Your heart aches at the sight, but despite her weary appearance, you can see she’s stronger than she was however long ago you saw her last – it feels like years, but you know it’s most likely only been days. Her chin is high, revealing her split lip oozing blood – a new wound, one you suspect she sustained in resistance on the way to whatever this gathering represents. You remember her struggle against Roan; Clarke does not come easily.

Clarke flicks a blond fringe from her eyes and reveals a deep bruise across her brow and eye. It’s an older wound, and you know by the way Ontari feels a rush of vicious satisfaction at the sight exactly who’s responsible.

Your response is a knee-jerk blow against her consciousness, and you send back a rush of satisfaction of your own when the image reels and Ontari clutches her head with a grunt.

From the corners of her fuzzy vision, you see Titus take a step to her side. “Heda?”

Your title from his lips – intended for another – hurts, but you feel three-dozen pairs of eyes on Ontari, and the flush in her cheeks at appearing weak in front of them soothes the ache.

“I’m fine,” she snaps, putting up a shaky hand.

Titus retreats, and you do as well. Even the solitary attack nearly broke your hold on this moment and sent you sprawling back into the abyss, and you’d rather save your strength to protect Clarke from impending harm than to avenge wounds already disregarded.

Ontari straightens; you can still feel the headache you caused pulsing beyond the barrier, but you wait. She shakes it off and refocuses on Clarke as her confusion reverts to antagonism.  

“You will bow to me, _natrona_.”

A whisper of surprise travels through the assembly, and their presence falls into place. Ontari intends a public demonstration of her power over the ambassador of Skaikru, over _wanheda,_ and over the one you’re sure the streets whisper killed her predecessor – killed _you._

Clarke scoffs and lifts her chin. “Like hell I will.”

You feel a surge of pride and strength at her defiance. Both of you only ever bowed to one person.

Ontari narrows her eyes and quickly nods to a guard. You jump on high alert, because you know what will follow. Titus had expected the same from you when Clarke blatantly refused to bow; the fact that you’d just as stubbornly refused to hurt her had sowed the first seeds of suspicion and doubt in him.

The guard approaches, and Clarke eyes him warily. “What are you doing?”

He grabs her roughly, slams the butt of his staff into the ground at her feet, and looks up at his commander expectantly. Clarke pulls away from him, but all it does it tighten his hand on her arm.

Ontari smiles wickedly. “You’ll bow, _natrona_ – it’s your choice whether you do it with shins intact or not.”

Clarke’s eyes widen, and a rumble of unrest goes through the crowd. In the corner, Murphy struggles against the leather around his wrists and mouth and groans an unintelligible protest.

“Heda –” Titus hisses in warning, and Ontari shoots him a glare that stops him short.

“Would you care to join her, Titus?”

Titus swallows thickly, and his eyes flick to Clarke, who returns his uncertain look with stony accusation. You share the sentiment. He promised you. You don’t think he expected to be faced with such a choice so soon, but the fact that your ashes have barely cooled should push him harder, if anything.

He shakes his head and steps back.

“Really?” Clarke demands, struggling against the guard. “Is this what your word is worth?”

“I will not harm you,” Titus says softly. Ontari shoots him a glare, daring him to defy her; he ducks his head submissively, but doesn’t retract his words. “But my duty is to my commander.”

It’s a bitter pill, but you know you can’t expect him to take Clarke’s place – to suffer this, maybe to die in her stead. Only you did that, in the end.

“Your duty was to Lexa,” Clarke hisses. “She trusted you with her life.”

“As she did you –” Ontari interjects sharply. “And you took it from her.”

The crowd stirs in surprise, Clarke pulls back like she’s been slapped, and Ontari soaks up the response with barely disguised glee. “Your commander, killed by a Skaikru weapon in the hands of a Skaikru traitor.”

Your blood boils. Ontari feeding the rumors of your death by Clarke’s hands asserts her own strength by resisting the one that caused your downfall. You should have expected it, but you didn’t think she’d lie so publicly. It’s certainly effective, because the crowd whispers and mumbles, wide-eyed but with full belief. Ontari’s word has become law, just like yours was.

“No,” Clarke says as she shakes her head with fierce denial, but the tears that rush to her eyes belie her certainty – as well as her belief in her innocence. The sight fractures your already broken heart and pulls at you until you swear your feet are back on the ground next to her. “That’s not true. I didn’t – ”

“Silence,” Ontari snaps.

Clarke’s lip trembles, but she complies, and you feel Ontari’s smug satisfaction creep into your mind like a cancer. You shake her off, but seeing Clarke’s grief and guilt hurts too much to do anything but defend. Clarke’s name brought you back from the depth of the darkness, but maybe you weren’t ready for this; you need more time to recover before you have any hope of protecting her from Ontari’s malice.

You feel another surge of satisfaction from her that nearly blinds you, but you hold on.

“Bow,” Ontari commands. “Or I will make you.”

Clarke carefully swallows back her tears, and lifts her chin. “Go to hell.”

The crowd rumbles at her audacity and Ontari nods to the guard.

You don’t hesitate: you throw your mind against Ontari’s as swiftly and as mercilessly as the guard slashes down the staff, and the blows land simultaneously.

Ontari and Clarke cry out in unison, two sounds with opposing effects on your ability to stay conscious – but Ontari is the one that drops to her knees.  

A hush falls over the crowd. Ontari looks up in shock, and Clarke looks down at her with equal surprise. Clarke is the first to recover, and you see a hint of a memory in her eyes, one that’s branded into your own mind like the memory of her lips on yours – but for this commander, Clarke does not reach down to bring her back to equal footing. Instead, despite the grief, the guilt, and the way she’s heavily favoring her right leg, she straightens and looks down on Ontari, face set in stone.

“I thought I was supposed to bow to _you_ , Ontari.”

Gasps of awe and surprise ripple through the crowd, and Ontari tries to get to her feet, but you stop her. She is not the first commander to bow to Clarke, but she’ll be the first to do it publicly; you push with all your might to make her know it, and she shakes on the ground at Clarke’s feet.

“Get her out of my sight,” she hisses, screwing her eyes shut and fighting back against your attack. You feel your power waning and your pain growing without the sight of Clarke to keep you strong, but you hold your ground.

“Keep her and the thief confined.” There’s a bustle of movement as Ontari’s subordinates follow her command, but your mind focuses on one sound: Clarke’s receding footsteps that echo your power to resist Ontari’s counterattack. They fade from perception, and you cave under the force of your successor’s mind.

The drifting fades much quicker this time, and you regain a semblance of consciousness in a matter of hours. You nudge against Ontari’s mind, and you feel her bristle with trepidation and the knowledge that you’re there. Good, you think. You’re done staying in the background. Before today, you were a sentinel in her mind, still too disoriented to do anything but watch and wait or risk knocking yourself unconscious against her mind by attempting to intervene.

But after the close victory in the throne room and after seeing Clarke’s defiance – despite her grief and despite the way you know she’s breaking just as hard as you are – you push yourself to the limit of your existence, and every thought, feeling, or dream Ontari lets you see becomes a weapon you turn back on her. She considers ending the blockade on Skaikru with a massacre – you claw at her mind until only the mention of Arcadia in council meetings makes her break out in a cold sweat. She tries to access the past commanders’ memories, but you fight her invasion with all your power until she’s knocked to her knees with the sensation of her brain bursting from her skull. She dreams of Nia, and you push your own memories right back at her and wake her sobbing as she watches you kill the only woman she ever considered mother.

You are strongest when she sleeps. Just as the past commanders spoke to you in your dreams, they speak to Ontari. You are one of them now, a voice meant to offer counsel and warning and wisdom.

But you have other plans. You don’t speak; you scream.

You feel the other commanders’ disapproval and resistance when you wake Ontari panting and sweating in a fit of terror in the middle of the night, night after night, but you ignore them with little effort. Clarke holds you tethered to the world of the living, and they’re nothing but ghosts in Ontari’s mind when you are a storm to be reckoned with. You rage against the barrier between you and batter the hull of her mind until the ground beneath her sways like a ship’s deck. You are a thunderclap in a dreamless night on calm seas. You will sink her on the rocks of her cruelty to the girl you love, if it’s the last thing you do.

But the storm calms without warning one night when her mind supplies memories of cruelty to the only person besides Clarke that you ever dared to love.

Costia.

Her face in Ontari’s thoughts stops your attack short, and the sleeping commander sighs in relief when her mental skies clear. You watch her dreams without intervening – perhaps you’re wrong. Perhaps they’re just that: dreams. But they have a clarity and a crispness to them that you’ve come to recognize from the inside looking out. Dreams are like something seen through water or from a great distance. Memories use a looking glass. And the images and sounds of Costia’s torture are crystal clear and magnified a thousand times in the silence and seclusion of your existence.

The sight nearly breaks you. Ontari shivers in her sleep like she senses your power waning, and you swim back to her mind, despite the way all that’s left for you is to watch Costia’s agony. You didn’t know – oh, you cried yourself to sleep imagining Costia’s last hours night after night, knowing love is weakness and proving it with every sob you had to muffle in solitude – but until now, you didn’t know the extent of her pain. Every scream cuts to the core of your soul, and you shake with grief at remembering how you had been unable to save her from her nameless tormentors.

The years gave you their names. Leffe kom Trikru – the one that kidnapped her from your bed but shirked fault or punishment until he met an honorless death by Anya’s sword in a training exercise (Anya called it an accident until her death, but she was also the only one who knew your grief and you never believed her). Casio kom Floukru – the one that transported her and succumbed to a death by a thousand cuts when you unearthed his slave trade (you avenged more people than Costia that day). Nia kom Azgeda – the puppeteer, and the sweetest revenge of all.

But a name was missing from the list, because Ontari’s memories show that she wielded the knife, fist, and fire on more occasions than one.

You wonder if she volunteered for it or if it was an obligatory step in Nia’s twisted, secretive _natblida_ training. You don’t care; she tortured Costia, and she’ll know you know until her headaches crack her skull.

You end the calm like you’re passing the eye of the storm, and Ontari shrieks herself awake with hands scrambling for purchase on the sheets and Costia’s screams in her ears.

Like a wave that crashes itself out of existence, you black out almost as soon as Ontari throws up her defenses. It is a quicker, more stinging loss than before, and you’re drowning in darkness before you know what’s hit you. You think of Costia and try to pull yourself back to the surface with her memory – but she is a lifeline that went slack years ago. She was your first love, an innocent, youthful romance that not even Titus worried enough about to truly disapprove of. You loved her dearly, and her death was the first lesson in _love is weakness_ , learned far too young, but you’ve learned much since then. _Clarke_ taught you much since then, and Costia is not your link to the living anymore. It’s Clarke – unequivocally.

You hear her voice only a few hours after losing to Ontari, and you breathe in her presence like it’s sunlight and clear air after you’d been trapped in your own storm.

“Have you come to bow to me again, Ontari?”

Her face stutters into your vision, and you feel revitalized just from seeing her. You barely recognized her before, when her eyes were as dead as you are and her hands shook on bloody furs to deny it was true, and the girl you forced Ontari to bow to wielded defiance like a shield to hide her grieving heart, but this Clarke is the one that once held a knife to your throat – enraged by loss and betrayal and guilt, instead of broken by it. Her eyes shine with it, and despite being bound to the chair beneath her, her hands are steady.

Ontari looks down at her with a calculated, venomous smile. “That won’t be happening again.”

Clarke shakes her head. “Too bad. I was looking forward to it.”

Ontari ignores it, and takes a step around her. The room should be familiar – you thought you knew all of Polis – but it isn’t. The air is thick and heavy from a fire in the corner, and you suspect you’re underground. Secluded. You don’t like it one bit.

“I brought you here to offer you a chance to bow in private, if you will not do so with an audience,” Ontari says. “Swear fealty to me and – ”

“Never,” Clarke says instantly. Her eyes shine, and you know what she’s remembering. You’ve been there and back again so often, there are times you wonder how Ontari stays standing in Clarke’s presence when all you feel is the ache to drop to your knees again and let impossible promises fall from your lips.

“Are you sure?” Ontari asks, and you feel the smile in her voice. You wonder what her intentions are. She keeps her mind shielded from you, and you’re too hesitant of using this chance of seeing Clarke to bore into her walls and reveal her secrets. To force Clarke to bow in private means nothing for Ontari’s public image or perceived power. Does she think Clarke submitting to her will force you to submit as well? You lash out against her on instinct, enough to make her know you’re still there without wasting what strength you have, and she cringes.

“Headache?” Clarke asks, and Ontari shoots her a glare. “The guards talk.”

Ontari takes a beat to clear her mind and suppress the pain, but her voice is steady. “Do they?”

Clarke nods, and her smile darkens. “Of your weakness.” A beat. “Just as they do of mine.”

Your heart jolts like Clarke tugged the lifeline between you. _You_ were her weakness, just as she was yours; they talk of _you_ , and you have not been forgotten.

Now, you will be Ontari’s weakness.

You scratch at the barrier again, and whatever response Ontari intended is lost in a flinch of pain before she throws her walls up again.

She takes another step as Clarke glares up at her. “If you will not bow, you will be treated as what I have always assumed you to be: a traitor.”

“I thought I already was,” Clarke points out flippantly. “Confined quarters, limited rations, the occasional _attempted_ public branding as one – ”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ontari interjects, and you bristle at the unexpected rush of glee that filters through the barrier. “We have much different ways of branding traitors.”

Clarke’s eyebrows contract in confusion and she tenses, and though she gives Ontari nothing, you know her well enough that despite the fight in her eyes, she’s uneasy. You loosen your hold on Ontari’s mind cautiously. There is something wrong in this – Clarke’s refusal to bow feels _hoped_ for, and whatever actions Ontari has planned, fully premeditated – and you can’t help but be afraid for Clarke, no matter how she defies her.

“I’m sure your Skaikru thief has filled you in on our methods?” Ontari asks as she turns to a corner of the room. Her eyes land on something she’s hidden from your mind until now, but a route of action that should have been as obvious as it is terrifying – a branding as traitor much more literal than a public declaration of treason.

If you still had a heartbeat, it would rush to racing, and the surge of protective fear throws you forward against Ontari’s mind before you know what you’re doing. You feel the energy it takes her to maintain the defense and keep from flinching, but Ontari was expecting it, and her walls are up, high and strong. You shake with exhaustion and relent before you black out. You can’t lose now, because you’re sure Ontari will hurt Clarke anyway, and though perhaps it would be a blessing that you wouldn’t see it, losing your chance to protect her is something you refuse to accept. You’ll suffer a second death by a thousand screams from the girl you love if only for the small chance of shielding her from it.

You just hope you’ll be able to, because Clarke’s uneasiness has turned to fear, and you’ve only been strong against Ontari when Clarke was.

“What are you doing?” Clarke asks, pressing herself back against the chair when Ontari takes the tool from the smoldering fire and steps toward her wielding the promise of pain. Her voice is high and her breathing fast, and the sight of Clarke’s terror – not defiance, for a short, painful moment – threatens to drag you back into the dark.

“What Lexa should have done,” Ontari spits. She lifts the tool; the red end is flattened into a pattern of lines as familiar to you and your people as the alphabet: the sign for traitor, _natrona_. “She branded your leader to bring Skaikru into the coalition; I will brand you – their ambassador – to show everyone that Skaikru will never be part of us again.”

It’s a ruse, and you know it. The results of this moment may be political, but the intentions are purely personal. You feel it in the way she watches you like a hawk in her mind, honing in on any sign of weakness – any sign of love – and waiting for your surrender. She wants to pry you out of her mind and regain control in the only way she’s ever held power – by threats and fear – and the way your consciousness is stumbling to keep hold warns you it may work.

“You can’t do this,” Clarke says in a rush, shaking her head and pulling back from the smoking metal. “The alliance is Lexa’s legacy.”

“And annihilating Skaikru will be mine,” Ontari hisses. “Starting with this.” She smirks and cocks her head. “Or did you think Lexa could protect you from beyond the grave?”

You can.

You _can._

The conviction is strong only in hoping, because Clarke’s hands are shaking, and suddenly, so are you.

Ontari smiles like she was counting on it and steps in. You push against her, but she resists, and you scramble for purchase on her mind and the moment to keep from fading away again.

Did _you_ do this? you wonder with desperate dread. Did your revenge over Costia the night before give Ontari this idea? You were weakened so suddenly after you witnessed her torture in Ontari’s memories; you don’t think you can survive being powerless to stop the same thing happening to another girl you love – and now Ontari knows it.

Ontari lifts the skewer and looks down at Clarke from what feels like a great height. Vertigo hits, and Ontari smiles as your mind spins.

“Are you afraid?”

Clarke looks up at her, nostrils flaring. “No.”

It’s a lie, and Ontari’s vision blurs when you see the truth.

“Good.” She lifts the tool and raises it above Clarke’s skin at her collarbone.

“No! No, stop!” Clarke cries frantically.

The sight and sound weakens you more than Ontari’s growing power. You lose your grasp on Ontari’s vision just as she presses the brand down, and the fabric of gravity around you tears with Clarke’s scream of pain until you’re shaking to hold onto anything at all.

You attack nonetheless. There is no other choice. Your connection to Ontari’s senses quivers as you send blow after blow against her mind, but you realize quickly it’s not because _she’s_ weakening – you are. You bloody your mind against the ramparts she’s thrown up, and your cries of agony as they remain impenetrable are drowned out only by Clarke’s, heard across a great distance beyond the parapets you’re besieging. You force your way against them again and again, ramming at flaws in her walls and threatening to tear your own mind to shreds to crumble hers.

It’s no use. Clarke’s strength was the fuel for your fight, and without it, faced with her fear and pleas, your attack is reduced to exhausted, disoriented punches, while Ontari’s hope of victory holds off your consciousness like a fortress.

No, more than hope of victory: a silent but chilling ultimatum that she knows you have no choice but to answer.

Give in, or I continue.

Surrender, or I hurt her.

Spare the girl you love my cruelty; all you need to do is die again.

Your attack grows frantic and panicked as your mind races with the choice. You know what Clarke would choose, despite her suffering: she’d chose for you to stay, to live, to love her in silence and solitude. In life, most of your story was told that way – it’s fitting that it is no different in death.

But not like this. Not with the constant threat of her pain and death as the price of it. If your fight against Ontari endangers Clarke, you will surrender. You will die – _again_ – because you’ll always choose her – in life, in death, in what lies beyond.

Clarke sobs again, and you throw down your weapons and surrender.

Ontari’s mind swells with a staggering surge of malice and victory, and she lifts the brand from Clarke’s skin.

“There is no one left to protect you now,” she hisses, overlaying Clarke’s sobs. Her voice is a cool echo in darkness, and you struggle to cling to her senses as night closes in again and you wait for the true death. It is a slow descent into nothingness – a sinking to your knees before her, a plea and sacrifice in one, chin dipping and eyes closing and neck baring as she rises up for your execution. You didn’t think you would lose your fight like this – bowed, defeated – but if dying is to be your fate once more, you will follow the universe’s bitter plan, and you can do nothing but wait for Ontari’s finishing blow to land.

“Fuck you!” Clarke yells, half sobbing, half screaming – a vibration that shudders through the dark abyss your world is narrowing down to. You think it may be the last of her you’ll hear. Through the haze of your blurring vision, you see her cheeks flushed with pain and skin blistering red and singed with ash, but she struggles against the restraints on her wrists like she barely feels it – like everything has boiled down to the object of her hate that you just surrendered to.

“Where is your power over death now, _wanheda?”_ Ontari whispers, twisting the knife when she knows you’re as good as gone and she’s as good as won. “You couldn’t stop Lexa dying before, and you can’t stop it now. ”

Confusion flickers through Clarke’s eyes, but they’re so filled with tears that the look is replaced with grief as soon as it appears. Her voice breaks with a hitch and a choked groan, and she hangs her head and sobs, and you can’t stand it anymore.

You’re going. You can feel it, like the tipping back of your head before a faint This will be your end, and the last thing you will see before you join your stoic predecessors that never dared to love, will be Clarke giving in as well.

Ontari smiles with malicious satisfaction and lifts up for the final blow against you, and you focus the last of your senses on the image of Clarke so intently – memorizing her, drinking in every detail, letting yourself slip away in memories of her – that you almost miss her voice completely:

“I killed Lexa.”

You hear it across fathoms and fathoms, low and dangerous, cutting through the sound of her sobs that echoed as the last thing you heard.

“ _Fine_. Scream it from the rooftops if you want to, tell them what I did.” A beat, a controlled exhale. “But I am _not_ _wanheda._ Not anymore – not after Lexa. I am _wanheda gon heda._ ”

Commander of the death of commanders.

Oh, Clarke…

She lifts her head and glares up at Ontari, eyes dark and defiant and _alive_. “And you will be next.”

Something flutters through Ontari’s mind – faint and transient and instantly muffled – but the subtle ripple it sends through the abyss that would be your second grave is like shockwave to you when you recognize it.

Fear – sharp and brittle.

Instantly, you yank yourself back, head lifting, chest rising, senses returning, and mind swelling with a breath of life and revival. Ontari’s walls are down, disregarded after the victory, and though you are still struggling to even stand, your mind is primed for an attack that feels more ironclad than if you had a sword in your hand. You advance against her, and she rushes to defend, but she’s too late, too slow, weakened by fear and the false security of a war won, and you push past abandoned gates and derelict walls like they barely exist, until suddenly, you’re there again: back in the arena of Ontari’s mind.

You meet her head-on and slash your mind across hers without mercy.

She cries out sharply and stumbles back, nails digging crescents into her scalp and voice straining to hold back the groan of agony. You pursue for another attack, and she scrambles backwards through the room like the battleground is around her, like your feet are back on solid ground and you’re reclaiming it with every step. Through her narrowed eyes, you see Clarke’s blue ones, dark with bloodlust and hate; you hold on to her defiance like it is your sword and your shield, and Ontari flees across the ground, unable to parry or escape as you advance.

Her eyes flit down desperately to the brand on the ground and then back to Clarke once more, and you know what she sees – the only thing that’s worked against you so far.

She snatches it up and shoots to her feet, fists balling, arm rising, back arching, and your reaction is instant: you throw your consciousness forward to shield the girl you love – and Ontari’s arm freezes at the height of its arc.

You don’t know who is more shocked at it, but you both recover with warriors’ reflexes, and Ontari throws back her arm again; Clarke ducks her head and cowers, expecting nothing but the blow and the pain, but you clamp on, and Ontari remains frozen. Her muscles strain and stand taut, and you feel the scream building in her throat like her vocal chords are your own, but you hold her back, stopping the metal of the traitor’s brand like you’re wielding a sword that meets it midair.

Slowly, you surge up, taller than you’ve been since you towered over Roan – you were fighting for revenge then, for Costia, and though death is a nuisance, you are far stronger now, fighting for Clarke – and you push and push and push, until finally, Ontari is back on her knees and elbows in front of Clarke, sobbing her defeat and paying homage to the defiance of the one that, ultimately, gave you the strength to undo her.

You take a breath. Ontari’s eyes rise to Clarke’s face, and the wonder and victory you see there lingers for a long time, even when Ontari wrenches her eyes shut and runs from the room, brand clattering to the floor behind her.

You spiral into darkness when she does, exhausted beyond imagination, but your hand never unclenches from the sword the last battle gave you – the weapon that Ontari intended to wield against Clarke, turned back against her. It is pivotal, it is game-changing. Your Lazarus attack wounded her, yes, but she’s always been able to resist pain – or more accurately, channel it into Clarke, into the strength of her arm, in some roundabout way of forcing you to relent. You’d felt every fiber straining with her desperation, a coil pressed to breaking and needing nothing more than to be released.

She couldn’t. You held back her arm. You controlled her, if only for a split-second.

And if the ruthlessness with which she fends off any threat of your attack in the days that follow is any indication, Ontari knows it.

Your fight is not over. Perhaps it’ll never be. But you’ve got something worth fighting for.

You throw yourself against the barrier night after night, revived with hope and purpose, causing Ontari excruciating night terrors and sleepless nights and yourself agonizing mental bruises from her unyielding resistance, but her defense has become a wall laid brick by mental brick that she spends half of the meager energy she gains from her limited sleep to keep intact. You spend every moment that you’re not drifting rebelling, but Ontari knows she’s in danger, and she’s all the more desperate in her defense because of it. Using the strength you reclaimed from the near-ashes of your second death, you scream at her throughout the night and bash your mind against hers until she’s sobbing and begging you for a moment’s reprieve. You offer her as much mercy as she showed Clarke and Costia, and soon she wishes for the same fate as the latter. You’ll happily oblige – take over her arm and slit her own throat, force a misstep off of Polis’s balcony, or let her meet a blade to the gut while training her _natblida_ successor – but you know, despite your perseverance, that you’ll need Clarke to do so. You don’t stand a chance to take over unless you’re doing it with her defiance as your sword, that much has become clear in the past few weeks. The gloating over your death, the public beating, the branding – you were only defiant when Clarke was, only strong when you saw your memory shining in Clarke’s eyes, and only powerful when you amplified what little power Ontari gave her. Clarke is the reason your fight isn’t finished, and you’ll force Ontari to face it, if it’s the last thing you do.

You can take over. If only you can see Clarke once more, you’re sure you can push through the barrier and reach her.

A week passes – you think. Time is different in death. When you are drifting, you lose hours that feel like days. But when you’re there, when you see out of Ontari’s eyes and read her thoughts and live her dreams, the days become minutes, and any moment without Clarke passes in the blink of an eye.

You notice quickly that she doesn’t think of Clarke, turning away from even the hint of a thought of her with a speed that dizzies you, time and time again. You suspect she only dares to on days when you’re recovering from her defense. You still lose the battle every time you attack and you drift more days than you fight, but you also know she can’t escape you, and that’s reason enough to keep fighting when you can. You don’t know if Clarke’s absence from Ontari’s thoughts is a godsend or a curse. You think you can fill in which direction her thoughts would go, but not a musing has passed by of her, and you worry. At the very least, Ontari doesn’t see her. You’d know. There is little in death that you can trust, but you trust that. You’d know.

You just hope she’s sent no one in her stead to carry out what plans she may have succeeded in hiding from you.

You get your answer soon enough, and you’re pulled back to reality by her name.

“Clarke is – ”

“Don’t say her name!” Ontari hisses urgently.

It’s too late. You’re there, and you shackle yourself to the moment with a sharp, well-aimed attack that hurts Ontari as much as it hurts you.

“Heda?” Titus asks, concerned, as Ontari shakes with the pain and presses two hands against her temples.

“Clarke,” she hisses, and you know instantly that her desperation is feeding this defiance. She should know better, because the name dulls your own pain, and you attack again. Ontari grunts and lurches forward. Titus catches her and holds her upright.

“ _Natrona kom Skaikru,_ ” she pants, cutting off his concerned sputtering. “You will execute her.”

Titus falls silent instantly, and a hush settles over the secluded scene as though you’re back in the silence of death.

“No, I will not,” he says finally, and Ontari bristles.

“What?”

“I will not harm her.”

Ontari’s hand clenches into a fist. “You dare defy my orders?”

Titus looks down on her, expression unreadable. “I swore a vow to the commander.”

The back of Ontari’s hand whacks across Titus’s cheek, and he staggers back, eyes wide. You feel Ontari’s rage, and you match it, but her defense when her blood is boiling like this is a sword in her hand that you will spear your mind onto resisting, and you hold back.

“ _I_ am the commander,” Ontari snaps.

Titus cradles his cheek, but slowly straightens and doesn’t flinch from her fuming.

“I swore it to them all – to the Flame that I serve, above all. And I will never raise my hand against Clarke.” His hand drops to his side, revealing the sharp red line that Ontari’s rings have drawn over his cheek. “Even if you will raise one against me again.”

His loyalty to you weakens Ontari’s defense while you grow stronger, and you dare a lunge that makes her flinch.

“How noble of you,” Ontari hisses through clenched teeth.

“It is the duty of the commander to carry out executions. No matter the accused,” Titus adds softly, dutifully, and you know he’s remembering Gustus, just as you are. “You must be the one to carry out the sentence.”

Ontari grinds her jaw, pulsing the muscle there to soothe the ache you’re causing in her temples. “She does not deserve death at my hands.”

“You are wrong. She is _Wanheda._ Her death at your hands will do nothing but bolster your power. You know this.”

A beat of silence falls, and you scratch at the barrier to send her a pulsing, throbbing pain that reminds her you’re still there, you’re still watching, you’ll hurt her – you’ll take over if she faces Clarke again.

“It can’t be me.”

“Why?” Titus asks.

Ontari stays quiet. You scratch again, and she cringes.

“Heda, why do you resist it?”

“Because she won’t let me,” Ontari says in a rush.

You’re glad she finally understands how this arrangement works. You retract your mental claws and wait, watching.

Titus looks at her, frowning. “What?”

Ontari shakes herself like your temporary reprieve is a chill she can’t seem to dispel, and looks away quickly. “Nothing. Forget it.”

A moment passes, before Titus says grimly, “If you wish Clarke dead, you must be the one to execute her. It is the only way.”

You feel Ontari’s thoughts – hinting at plans – tread carefully and hushed through her mind, rustling with the name of the girl you love, and you give chase without hesitation and without mercy. Her vision blurs and you’re rushed from the scene, but your mind is quick and sharp and trained and you hunt her down well beyond the moment – into her dreams, into her memories, into any place she convinces herself will be sanctuary. She still manages to keep you out most days, but when her walls are barest and she can no longer find the strength to defend, you are relentless. You trail the thoughts she has of Clarke like a bloodhound and force her to flee into the darkest depths of her mind to escape you. You snap at her heels until she’s panting with desperation and every breath she takes heaves with exhaustion. You howl and howl and howl as you pursue, reminding her with every note of what targeting Clarke has made of her: prey to be hunted.

The dead are gone – but now you know, they are just as hungry as the living, and Ontari’s surrender is the only thing that will sate you.

Time passes with the same disjointedness as before, made worse by the increasing incoherence of Ontari’s mind as she flees from your attacks. She builds a labyrinth around it, intent on keeping you out with the last scrap of cunning she possesses when she can no longer find the strength to fight you, and she surrounds her mind with rings upon rings of memories and fragmented moments and thoughts that blend the present and the past into a disconnected maze that holds you trapped. It is an unforeseen obstacle and frustration that you cannot simply fight your way through for fear of losing your treacherous footing completely, until you can no longer tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t.

The thing is, after a while – neither can she.

She is restless, sleepless, and fraught with disquiet even when you are not attacking. Her labyrinth is interwoven with memories of Nia and her cruel _natblida_ training, and she is disturbed and enraged and frightened just from reliving them. You might have felt an inkling of pity if she hadn’t repeated the cycle of abuse on the girl you love and, from what you’ve seen, on her own _natblida,_ with far more zeal. Instead, you scratch against the memories as you pass by them and make her cringe, and slowly you ensnare Ontari in her own web that only grows more convoluted as she struggles to keep you out.

Her desperation grows by the day, and her face grows pale and gaunt and sallow to match the prisoner she still keeps confined in the room you died in. You wield the reminder as a weapon and twist her mind into sharp, painful turns like the paths of her maze before she pushes you and thoughts of Clarke away. You catch glimpses of hallways and meeting rooms that grow silent as she enters them, quieting on the end of whispers of rumors of her weakness and her madness, and she grows distrusting, so that every advisor and servant is met with aggression and disproportionate cruelty. Her young _natblida_ dies by her own hand in training in a fit of jealous paranoia, so that the only ones left with blood as black as her own are the dead ones that whisper in her mind. She whispers their names back, over and over, an irrational mantra she clings to in the hope that it will give her predecessors strength over you and herself the peace she craves, but you overpower all the rest with little effort, as you have since the beginning. They do not try to hold you back anymore; they harbor little pity for Ontari in any case, but more than that, they have come to understand the extent to which you will persist in this, and they stand by, silent watchers, distant guardians, waiting for the end to the war you wage.

You can win it. Ontari’s mind frays every time you find your way to her and manage an attack; you can push through the barrier between you, and you can take over. You just need Clarke to help you deal the final blow.

One day you’re yanked back to Ontari’s present with unexpected lucidity, and this time, it’s not Clarke’s name or voice that pulls the tether, but a thirst for blood so frantic that the emotion pierces through the deep abyss, levels the labyrinth in one shuddering blow, and pulls you back from drifting like it’s the last time you’ll ever feel the pull of that lifeline again. Ontari’s breathing speeds up when she feels you, but she shields her mind with startling efficiency and you can’t see in. You can only see out.

And what you see is a dimly lit hallway, a chillingly familiar door, and her hand tightening on a long knife at her side.

You barely recognize the mind that’s with you. The maze hid the state of her more than you could have anticipated, and the change is absolutely shocking. Bloodlust oozes from between the cracks in her mind like her consciousness is too fractured to contain it, the barrier between you vibrates with the waves upon waves of demented rage and fear that border on hysteria, and the terra firma of her very being is askew beneath you. Though the maze is destroyed and time is chronological again, you sense immediately that Ontari has lost all hold on it – living only in the moment, a wild thing obedient to instinct, mindless and timeless and willingly killing more than it could ever eat warm. Her hands shake and her vision flickers with exhaustion, and you feel her heartbeat in her throat as loudly as in her mind, counting out the beats like she’s afraid every one will be her last.

You’ve broken her, you realize with a jolt. She’s cracking under the pressure you applied, and though part of you smiles with victory at seeing it, you can’t deny the rush of fear that accompanies it, because you’ve forced her into a corner that the creature she’s become can see only one way out of.

The door closes behind her with a sharp click as she snaps the lock shut, and Clarke looks up in surprise.

Kill the girl that keeps you tethered to life.

Your heart races in perfect sync with your adversary’s when you take her in: yours in dread, hers in hate, and both of yours with the last hope for winning that this moment symbolizes.

You don’t hesitate – you know what Ontari came here to do, and the fragmented time that held little meaning before is suddenly your greatest enemy. You throw all you have against her battered walls, scrambling to break into her mind along the fissures your attacks have scratched into them. She cringes, but tears you away – a haggard and chaotic but brutal defense by a mind far beyond order – and takes a stumbling step into the room.

Clarke’s eyes drop down to the knife in her hand, and she freezes. “What are you doing?”

Ontari glares at her and hefts the blade, barely concealing the way her hand shakes on it. “Ending this.” She takes another step, but you wedge into a weak spot of her walls, and her foot lands too heavily. “I can’t live another day like this,” she hisses, staggering forward.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Clarke snaps, lip curled in hate. You admire her fight, but for once, you wish she wouldn’t goad Ontari on – not now, when you know what she intends to do and your strength to protect her from it feels unexpectedly, inexplicably inadequate against Ontari’s rabid mind.

“Like you don’t _know!_ ” Drops of spittle fly from Ontari’s cracked lips, and you cringe as she lashes out at you reflexively. “She does everything for _you_! She hurts me _for you_!”

You lunge against her, and she lurches forward another step, lip pulled back in a snarl as much against you as against Clarke. “When I hurt you, you can escape it. She _helps_ you escape it.” She grimaces and shakes her head frantically, like it’s taking all of her willpower to keep from slipping from the moment back into the chaos of her own mind that you feel throbbing beyond the barrier like a thing alive. “I can’t escape anything!”

Clarke’s eyes flit across her, taking in the sunken eyes, trembling hands, and the knife you as good as put there, and she takes a cautious step away from her. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but – ”

“It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you _are_.” The knife rises up again, and Ontari cocks her head and sights Clarke down the length of it like an arrow along a drawn bow. “Her _weakness_ …” She laughs humorlessly. “What a fucking lie...”

Clarke takes another step back, brows furrowed in a mixture of unease, confusion, and defiance, but her hand is inching along the table behind her, searching for a weapon you know she won’t find. “Ontari, look – ”

Ontari charges forward without warning, an uncoordinated but ruthless attack, and Clarke barely has time to dodge her before she slashes forward again. The knife slices across Clarke’s extended arm raised in defense in front of her, and she cries out sharply.

You rush forward and slam your mind against Ontari’s. She stumbles, her next lunge goes wide, and Clarke scrambles away.

Ontari straightens slowly, breathing heavily and practically frothing at the mouth as she holds you at bay. “Killing you ends it,” she hisses, jaw clenching and grinding against your advance. “Killing you kills _her_.”

Clarke rushes to her feet and backs away, breathing fast as blood seeps out from between her fingers where she clutches her injured arm. Her eyes flit around the room, looking for escape or a weapon and finding none.

You attack again, pushing away Clarke’s sudden fear; it was nearly your undoing last time. This is your _chance_ – the only one you’re likely to get – but Ontari advances with uncharacteristic intent: no spectacle, no bluster, knife held tight and mind shielded from you like she spent the last week rebuilding the walls you’ve been working so hard to break down. You should be crumbling them; in Clarke’s presence, you should be _winning_. But Ontari is forcing you back with snarling, feral attacks without a hint of the calculation and form and scheming she defended with before.

You realize the reason for the difference with sobering clarity: it is far harder to overpower the mind of someone who thinks they have nothing left to lose.

You’ve pushed her too far – taken too much –

She slashes forward with a ferocious growl; Clarke cries out in alarm.

– and it might be Clarke’s undoing.

The thought chills you to your core, and you scramble with all you have to hold on, to stay present, to attack – to protect everything that _you_ do still have to lose: the girl you love, and with it, what’s left of your soul.

“Ontari, stop!” Clarke shouts, circling away as she advances. “You don’t have to do this.”

Ontari slashes forward; Clarke ducks and dashes to the other side of the room. “I should’ve done it weeks ago.”

“Wait – just think about this,” Clarke says quickly, hands raised in defense. Her fingers are tipped with blood – red, though your memories cry black. “This is not the commander’s way.”

“You are _natrona, Skaikru –_ I have every right – ”

“To execute me!” Clarke cries frantically. “Not this! Not like this.”

“I don’t care!” she screams, staggering forward with alarming speed. You ram yourself against her mind, and she clutches her head, nails digging crescents into her own skin, but instead of submission, you feel her conviction grow with every aftershock until the only thing in focus in her vision is Clarke, backed against the opposite wall, eyes wide and locked with hers.

Her hand tightens on the dagger. “You have to die.”

Clarke swallows thickly, chest heaving and eyes bright with fear, and stands the only ground she has.

Ontari surges forward with a snarl, and you and Clarke crash against her in tandem – Clarke with fists and a savage shout, you with all the mental force you can muster and silence.

Ontari reels away under the assault, but she’s grounded again as quickly as she was thrown, and she rushes forward knife-first without preamble. Clarke grunts and ducks and lashes out; her counterpunch lands – hard – and you taste Ontari’s nightblood in her mouth, bitter iron and copper. Clarke’s next punch is just as ruthless – and the next, and the next, and the next. You mirror the attacks with your mind, drawing strength from Clarke – fighting together, despite the veil of death between you, against Ontari’s assassination.

Ontari rebounds quickly, and though her counterattack is imprecise and wide, it is at least twice as vicious her last, and you know it’s because she’s fighting two enemies at once. You match her ferocity as Clarke blocks, dodges, strikes back, kicks, ducks – takes a hit, barely avoids the blade, bleeds, flees. Despite the madness, Ontari is _azgeda_ , trained and armed, and Clarke is taking twice as many hits as she’s delivering. She’s tiring – _losing_ , blow by blow, and – oh, with every moment, you get closer to begging Ontari for the ultimatum she offered before – _take me instead, kill me instead, don’t hurt Clarke, let her go, let her live._ You’d do it in a heartbeat – take it all back – but you know Ontari wouldn’t accept your surrender even if she could hear your offer over the frenetic call for your death that echoes through her mind like the drums of war, drowning out everything else. You attack again, screaming in the silence to overpower her chant, and you know this will be the battle to decide the war: the last either for Ontari, or for you and Clarke, because Clarke’s death will be yours, as surely as if Ontari had wielded the knife against you instead.

Ontari staggers back, one hand on the dagger, one hand on her temple, but despite the way she grimaces and quakes under the pain, delivered twofold, you know it won’t be enough – Clarke’s fight, Clarke’s defiance isn’t enough, and worse: neither is yours. You orchestrated this, but – oh god – you are scrambling to hold together your defense in this battle – _protect Clarke_ – when you should be throwing everything you have against the door in Ontari’s mind that will let you take over and end the war.

Clarke lands another blow, haggard and desperate, and dodges the next lunge, backing away with increasing fear, but she loses her footing, and Ontari’s knife grazes over her flank, threading fabric and drawing blood before your counterattack can break her stance.

You were so sure – Clarke’s strength should be the key. Perhaps before, it would have been, and the key still fit. But Ontari has grown too strong in her eleventh hour desperation, and she’s barricaded the door, mangled the lock, and channeled everything she has into annihilating the one whose defiance would have given you the means to open it.

Clarke retreats, but not fast enough, and Ontari snaps her fist across her jaw with enough force that she’s knocked to the ground; you pound your mind against the barrier despite the dismay and fear that threatens to drag you into the dark.

You should have fought harder when you had the chance, before Ontari broke, you think desperately, mind racing.

Clarke scrambles backward across the ground, eyes wide with fear; Ontari pursues.

Or you should have died like you were supposed to when you surrendered.

Clarke reaches the bed behind her and claws her way to her feet, but another merciless punch knocks her back against the wall, and she barely remains standing.

There _must_ have been a way.

She crumbles around another blow with a cry that nearly makes you lose your hold on Ontari’s senses and renders your next attack futile.

What would have been enough? you beg of the abyss – of your silent predecessors, of anyone who will listen to the soul of a doomed commander that should never have let herself fall in love.

Time slows as Ontari slams Clarke back against the wall, trapping her there. She grunts and struggles, but the defiance is gone – she’s afraid, truly afraid, and you match it in equal, terrifying measure. You don’t remember ever feeling so powerless in life. You were unbowed until the end, except by choice – except for love.

Perhaps love _is_ weakness, if loving Clarke in this moment can make you feel so powerless, so fragile.

You force yourself back to the moment nonetheless, heaving with exhaustion and defeat – only to hear Clarke’s sharp intake of breath as Ontari presses the knife against her neck.

So this is how you both finally die: with your eyes locked with hers and a hand that feels like your own slashing a blade across her throat.

Ontari smiles – a demented, sickly thing; Clarke jerks away, but stops short against the knife’s edge.

You died in her place by Titus’s hands.

Now she’ll die in yours by Ontari’s – undone by the weakness you felt for her.

The blade tilts; Clarke closes her eyes.

No.

_No!_

The voice comes from far; you don’t know if it is your own, reclaimed from silence and memories and forgotten wisdom, or an answer from the dark you pleaded with, but it is loud and indomitable and tears the very fabric of time around you.

Love isn’t weakness.

It’s strength – more than defiance ever could be.

The realization twists your world on its axis, flooding it with light like turning back to a sun you didn’t know still shone, and you feel the wall separating you from Ontari vibrating and pulsating like a heart – _your_ heart, revived and full and armed with love immortal that Ontari will never know.

You understand now – love was the key – and with a jolt – like waking up, like facing true north – you fall through the barrier.

Instantly, your eyes flood with the full depth of Ontari’s vision, and her hand – _your_ hand – freezes before the blade breaks skin.

“Clarke.”

It is the first word you’ve spoken aloud since _life is about more than just surviving_ – and you say it to the one who showed you it could be.

Your hand loosens on the knife against Clarke’s throat, and you breathe out sharply in amazement as you take in the body responding to your command. Your chest rises and falls, breathing deeply after weeks spent without the need to. Your vision is clear for the first time in ages, the edges defined and focused like lighting up a room you hadn’t realized was dark. And though her body doesn’t feel quite like your own – rounded in places you weren’t, wiry in others, and filled to the brim with slowly ebbing bloodlust and panic you never felt in life – there is solid earth beneath you – _gravity_ , grounding you, the truest proof of your revival and return.

You take a small step back, laughing softly, eyes wide and disbelieving, before they rise up inevitably to the one that made it possible. Tears spring to your eyes despite your smile. “Clarke – ”

Her fist snaps across your jaw, and you stagger back, hand on your lip and eyes shooting up in shock. Clarke closes the distance without hesitation, and you lurch back, dropping the knife to the ground, as another blow lands. When you get back to your feet, Clarke is standing tall, malice and hatred painted across her face beneath the blood on her lip, her brow, her throat – and her hand is tight on the dagger at her side.

Oh no.

She lunges toward you with a snarl, and you hasten to avoid the knife that leads her attack.  

“Clarke, stop!” you cry, putting up your hands.

“I warned you,” Clarke snaps, face contorted with rage. She slashes forward; you jump back. “I _told_ you.” She lunges forward again. “ _Wanheda gon heda_ – ”

“You didn’t kill me, Clarke!”

A twitch of confusion flits across her face, but then it’s gone. “Not yet,” she snaps, hand and jaw equally tight on the means and will to kill as she advances on you.

You back away, hands still raised in submission, but your knuckles are pink and bruised from punches Ontari landed, and you know it’s all Clarke sees. Her knife slashes through the air, and you retract them, retreating desperately.

“Stop! It’s me! It’s Lexa!” you yell in a voice not your own.

Clarke’s eyes shoot open, but her brows contract with rage not a second later. “Shut up,” she hisses, sudden tears in her eyes, and swipes the dagger at you; you jump out of the way. “I’m done with your mind games.”

“No! Listen to me!”

She stabs at you, low and lethal; you smack her hand away, but don’t attack – you don’t think you could, not after everything you’ve seen her suffer. You never _could_ hurt her; if not in life, then certainly not in death.

“Please, it’s Lexa, stop!”

She doesn’t. You parry her overhanded lunge and push her back with force.

“Clarke! I’ve been fighting Ontari since the beginning! You have to believe – ”

“Shut _up_!” Clarke cries, tears streaking through the blood on her cheeks. She thrusts the knife forward, blind and uncoordinated, and you know that if Ontari were still fighting her, Clarke would be dead in an instant.

But she’s not; Ontari is a prisoner in your mind, in _her_ body, and you’ll never mimic anything she would have done. You grab Clarke’s wrist and hold her instead, begging for a connection that will let her see you beneath her hate for Ontari.

“Just _look_ at me!”

Clarke wrenches loose with a scream and shoves you back roughly. You stumble, feet clumsy and reluctant as you realize how this will go, how this will end for you – will end the gift of this moment.

“Just wait, please,” you plead.

Clarke’s eyes are deep and dark and pitiless as she steps in; you back away, heart racing.

“Don’t do this, Clarke.”

More tears spill from her eyes as you beg for your life, but her jaw is set and her eyes are hollow with grief and the need for retribution and vengeance for Ontari’s desecration of your memory. It is a mantle you never wished her to bear, but you understand the emptying thirst and force behind it – the power that, under _your_ skin, launched a spear across an arena to ensure that blood finally had blood.

Perhaps Ontari dying by Clarke’s hand is not the worst end to this.

After all, she’ll never know it was really you she killed.

Time seems to slow as Clarke advances, stretching the last moments you have with her with inexplicable mercy and affection.

You wish you could tell her you love her – you never got the chance to in life, and though your body is not your own, your feel it with every fiber of your being.

Clarke lunges forward again, and you dodge sluggishly, back hitting the wall behind you and mind winding back through the few memories you have of her, polished with the reliving so that they shine like pearls.

One shines stronger than all the rest – the closest proclamation of love and devotion you ever got the chance to make, and as Clarke draws back her arm for an attack that will surely be your end, it’s all you can think of:

_I swear fealty to you, Clarke kom Skaikru._

Instantly, Clarke freezes, and for a second, you think you’ve said it aloud – but the thud of your knees against the floor was the only sound to break the silence.

Clarke’s breath catches in tandem with yours, and you look up at her with the same wonder as you did then. It’s enough that Clarke hesitates, knife hand clenched and hovering, and brows knit in confusion, and you let the words only the two of you know slip from your lips like a prayer to whatever merciful god has watched over you both these last few months:

“I swear fealty to you, Clarke kom Skaikru,” you whisper. Ontari’s voice is scratchy while yours was full and firm, but the musicality you once brought to the words remains like you’re turning back time. You feel tears in your eyes as you look up at the girl you died for – the girl you lived _on_ for – and you swallow thickly to steady your voice. “I – I vow to treat your needs as my own – ” You take a breath, knowing the words may very well be your last, and your voice shakes despite your resolve to be strong: “ – and your people as my people.”

Silence falls, and Clarke looks at you, stunned into stillness, and you know she’s searching your eyes with the last hope that she has, searching your soul, searching for the mate she lost to the bitter turn of fate – searching for _you_.

“Clarke – ” you whisper again, half a sigh, half a plea.

Clarke remains motionless, breath and knife still frozen, eyes locked to yours – Ontari’s – but not seeing, any more than you see a window. She’s looking _through_. Recognizing your surrender in the reverent tilt of your face and your open palms by your side. Hearing the echoes of the words only the two of you know in the shudder of your exhale. Remembering your promise to her – _death is not the end_ – entwined with legends of the Flame.

You look up at her, any pleas caught in your throat, and simply hope.

It feels like an eternity, an age, and you don’t know what shatters the enchantment, but Clarke’s face suddenly lights with the most brittle hint of hope – so hesitant, so frail, that it almost breaks your heart to see it, but it’s there – the first time you’ve seen anything like it since you were alive, since you held her happy and sated and glowing in your arms and she was smiling at you like you were all she’d ever need.

“Lexa?” she whispers.

You nod desperately, barely daring to blink. “Yes. It’s me. I’m here. I’m _here_.”

Clarke’s breath hitches like she hears your voice beyond Ontari’s, and you wonder how she knows, how great the missing-you must be for her to see this, but you don’t question it, because she closes her eyes and sobs your name, and instantly, you’re on your feet, meeting her blindly searching hands and whimpers and pulling her close like you’ll never let go. The knife in her hand clanks to the floor with a familiar rattle – you’ve been here before, and though you ache to take away her pain, for once you were not the cause.

“I’m here,” you murmur as you gather her in your arms and she sags against you. You give into the movement, not trusting Ontari’s legs to hold you, and fall once more to your knees, Clarke held safe against you.

“Lexa…” Clarke sobs again, face pressed to your shoulder. You feel her tears against your collarbone and a lump rises in your throat at it, though your body barely feels like your own. Your own arms had far too few chances to hold Clarke, but nonetheless you know that Ontari’s fall short, feel wrong – not brave or safe or sure enough to hold her. You push away the thought and pull Clarke tighter against you anyway, shushing her softly as she cries.

After a minute, her breath catches, trapped in wonder and grief, and escapes from her on a single word: “…How?”

Your lips are against her temple, soft and kind. “I told you my spirit would live on,” you say softly. You didn’t know then how right you were, but you’re glad you were. “I’ve been here the whole time. I just couldn’t reach you.”

She pulls back slowly, taking you in, and though the hope and hesitant trust in her eyes is there, she blinks with knee-jerk fear and uncertainty when she sees Ontari instead of you.

“It’s me, I promise,” you say quickly.

She nods and swallows cautiously, and you can see she barely knows how to look at you – indecisive between searching your face for the trace of you she recognized, and looking anywhere but to avoid the reminder of the loathing that she bears Ontari.

“Close your eyes,” you offer softly, forcing the timbre of Ontari’s voice to die in the whisper. “If it makes it easier – ”

Clarke nods, eyes falling from your face – Ontari’s face – to your entwined fingers instead. She squeezes your hand and holds tight like she’s afraid you’ll disappear if she lets go and you can see her bottom lip quiver with the strength it takes her to resist looking at you.. “I – I don’t know what to say,” she mutters finally. “How – how is this possible? How are you here?”

By not letting go. By loyalty. By love.

“The Flame,” you answer. “Do you remember how I told that the past commanders whispered to me, offered counsel and warning?” Clarke’s eyes flick up at you and she nods. “It was the same for Ontari. I became one of them – and I’ve been fighting.”

Clarke’s eyes shoot open. “All this time?”

You nod. “To protect you.” Your eyes drop to her collarbone; you lift your hand and gently run your fingertips over the burn mark Ontari left there, a reminder of a battle nearly lost for both of you.

“I’m alright,” Clarke murmurs like she knows what you’re thinking.

Your hand stills, and your eyes rise back up to her face – the gaunt lines of her jaw, her sunken eyes, the fading bruise on her brow – and you swallow thickly. “ _Are_ you?”

Clarke looks up at you, eyes bright and lips parting quickly – too quickly – over the only answer she’s ever had the freedom to say: _I’m fine._ _I’m alive_. _I’ll survive. I can fight._ It’s the answer of a leader, of a soul so burdened by the lives of hundreds and the weight of past sacrifices in the name of the greater good that it cannot admit weakness for fear of crumbling beneath it all.

You press your palm to her cheek, cupping her jaw with gentle affection and reminding her that you _know_ , and she falters under the touch _._

“I – ” She licks her lips against the way the bottom one is trembling again, and suddenly you see her as you remember her, as you saw her at the last when she pushed the limit of her responsibility to her people to give in to want – and at the time, what you thought was weakness – to spend a few more precious moments with you. She does not need to be a leader here, with you, and you see the strength ebb out of her as she remembers it.

“You _died_ ,” she whispers, hot tears rising to her eyes and voice cracking over the cold truth. “You’re dead – _gone_. You died and they burned your body and I had to go on, even though I couldn’t – couldn’t – ” She shakes her head and wipes at her cheek gruffly, smudging blood more than tears. “I didn’t think I’d ever –” Her voice breaks again, thick with a sob, and you feel your heart breaking all over again at the despair behind it.

“Ssh, it’s okay,” you hush tenderly. You brush your thumb over her cheekbone and wipe away the moisture beneath her eyes so that they flutter closed again, and keep it there as she leans into it. “You’re not alone anymore.”

She nods and sobs, and you wish you could kiss the tears away, but Clarke keeps her eyes shut with purpose, holding on to the memory of you in her mind rather than in her sight, and you know that like this, with your hands still bloodied from the punches Ontari landed and the dagger she would have used to take Clarke’s life still within reach, you can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says suddenly, in a desperate rush completely at odds with the soft heaving of her sobs, and you instantly know she’s apologizing for far more than she should ever feel responsible for. You saw it before, during Ontari’s public accusation, during the branding, in the title _wanheda gon heda –_

“No,” you say with resolve, holding her cheek and her gaze sternly. “It’s not your fault. Don’t think that.”

She shakes her head, eyes dark with shame. “How can I not?”

“You are _not_ responsible.”

“You died from a bullet meant for _me!_ ”

“I know,” you say, swallowing against the bitter taste. “But dying in your place – if I’d been given a choice of death, I would’ve chosen that.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Clarke says fiercely. “Never.”

You stay silent; you know you’d feel the same if the roles were reversed, but that is not how fate has chosen to weave your lives’ stories, and there is nothing to do but resign yourself to what _has_ happened, how you _did_ die in Clarke’s place and you were both robbed of the place by each others’ side you were certain you would have sought the instant both of you owed nothing more to your people.

Clarke sniffs and shakes her head bitterly. “God, you were right in the end, weren’t you?” she says, jaw set, gaze dropping to your hands, and defeated, furious tears welling in her eyes. “Love _is_ weakness. You were right and _Titus_ was right and loving me killed you.”

The words are a clearing blow to the gut that empties your lungs and nearly makes you fear you’re back in zero gravity, gasping for breath you don’t need. You grip Clarke’s hand to ground yourself – this is _real_ , you’re _here –_ and pull yourself back to her.

“No,” you say with force, fingers tightening reflexively. “Don’t you _dare_ say that.” She shakes her head and moves to speak, but you go on, suddenly angry. “No, _listen_ to me. You can’t believe that. Not after all of this. Not after what we’ve been through, after everything – ” You break off, fist clenching to keep your hand from trembling, and shake your head with a sigh.

“I made peace with my death a long time ago, Clarke,” you say, voice low and fervent. “I was raised for it, you know that – an honorable death, fighting and dying for my people, that was to be my fate. Every commander’s fate. It was all I knew, all I was prepared for, and I was _ready_ for it.”

Clarke swallows thickly but doesn’t interrupt. You’re glad for it; you need her to understand. If this moment doesn’t last – and oh, though your heart races with hope, you feel the knowledge that it _won’t_ creep into you with every passing second – you need her to know the path that loving her put you on – and that it was anything but weakness. ~~~~

“I was willing to die,” you say softly, remembering how inevitable it had seemed. How easy and honorable and _right_ – until Clarke found her way into your life and heart and shook the fundament of your belief and existence. Until she asked you to trust her; begged you to answer a massacre with mercy; told you to _live_ instead of survive.

“I was ready,” you say, controlling the tremor in your voice. “But in the end, I wasn’t ready to let you go.”

Clarke looks up, eyes wide and shimmering, and you cup her face in both your hands. She closes her eyes, and you can’t hold back a sob.

“Loving you brought me _back_ , Clarke.”

She exhales, quickly and deeply, and falls still, and the silence at the end of her breath rings with the hollow notes of unendurable loss that you left behind – but then she slowly nods and leans into you, and though you know the understanding and love painted across her face only lasts as long as she keeps her eyes closed, you think you could stay like this forever and never regret a single moment that brought you here.

Suddenly, the silence and the calm is shattered by a piercing cry that reverberates through your mind unlike anything you’ve ever heard, so protracted and grating that you’re sure it must be echoing through the room just as deafeningly.

It takes you too long to realize that it _is_ – and that it was _you._

Ontari stabs her mind against yours again, locating the most tender and live spot and plugging into the pulse, and you crumble around the blow like she thrust a dagger into your brain.

Oh god, it hurts. You know pain well, but if this is what your attacks did to her when the roles were reversed, you understand how you broke her. You jerk and spasm on the ground as you beat her off, throat clamped shut over the silent scream of agony and your sudden inability to breathe.

“Lexa! What’s happening?”

You hear Clarke over a great distance as Ontari splits your skull, sockets into the cracks of your bones, clamps into the jugular, but you grasp for the sound of her voice like a lifeline, wrenching yourself back to the moment with a desperate gasp.  

“It’s Ontari,” you pant, reaching blindly for Clarke like holding her will hold you here. “She’s trying to take over.”

“Fight her!” Clarke pleads, cradling you, steady and sure and careful, as another attack slams you to the ground with shaking.

“I – I can’t,” you grunt. You feel Ontari beyond the walls of your mind – walls that feel suddenly feeble and forceless against the mind that is amplified in power with the right to inhabit this body, to take back what you stole. “I can’t hold her back.”

“No!” Clarke cries. “I can’t lose you again.”

You shake your head frantically, a desperate, inadequate attempt to dislodge your adversary from your mind. You should’ve known it wouldn’t last. You spent weeks fighting Ontari for control over a body you have no right to – you couldn’t expect her to do anything but match your ruthlessness in the fight for her own survival.

“She’s too strong,” you whisper around a cry of pain. Clarke whimpers and gathers you close and it’s the soft familiarity of her touch shooting through you like the bullet that killed you, that reminds you that there is more than just this moment or your own life to lose.

You heave to sitting as Ontari wrestles for control over your senses, looking at Clarke through faltering vision and subduing the quivering in your voice. “Clarke – you have to kill her.”

Clarke pulls back, tear-filled eyes wide with shock. “What?”

“When she overpowers me, the first thing she’ll do is kill you.”

“No.” Clarke shakes her head and steels her jaw. “I’ve survived this far, I’ll survive her.”

Though your heart aches at it – is that really all she’s being doing since you died? – you know that in this moment, Clarke surviving is all you can hope for.

“You don’t understand – I think I’ve broken her.” You feel Ontari clawing at the barrier between you, bloodying and bludgeoning her mind and biting tooth to neck without a hint of self-preservation or the dignity of the living. Though it is different defending from this uncompromising predator than attacking the uncomprehending prey, you know that after this, she’ll win either way. You will not overpower her again – and neither will Clarke. “There is no fighting her. She’ll kill you.”

You remember the lengths to which she’d showed you she’d go when she was still in control, thoughts sent at you in rapid-fire so that the pain she intended to inflict on Clarke ricocheted through you and threatened to overpower your strength to protect her from it.

You can’t let that happen.

You press the handle of the dagger into Clarke’s hand and tighten your fist over her fingers. “You need to end it.”

“Lexa – ”

Ontari shrieks a battle cry into the abyss and rams her mind against yours, and you shake with agony. “Kill her.”

“Kill _you_ , you mean,” Clarke cries, angry and panicked.

“I’m already dead, Clarke.”

Once you give in to the truth of it again – of Death, crude and lasting – you’ll chase that unfeeling mistress to the ends of Her kingdom and show Her how dying _should_ go: not _this,_ with a revocation of its permanence, at last retracted and replaced with a choice and sacrifice you never asked for.

“No,” Clarke sobs, breath catching. “No, I don’t accept that. You’re here.” She slams the knife to the ground and pulls you against her, eyes shut tight, and you know she’s imagining your face, your touch, _you_. “You’re here.”

You wrap both arms around her and nod silently, still cowering under Ontari’s onslaught, but Clarke’s warmth and nearness, pulsing with belief and conviction and love, keep you anchored to the present, casting shackles around the ankles of time and a shield against the future its steps bring.

In this moment, you’re here. You’re _here._

You pull Clarke tighter against you and banish all other thoughts.

Suddenly, you feel a presence in your mind, and you sob in dismay and throw up your walls on instinct – you are not ready to go, not ready to die again, not yet, _please_ not yet _–_ but the touch is poised and sympathetic where Ontari’s was frantic and terrible, and you feel your guard slipping at its approach.

 _Lexa kom Trikru,_ it whispers, all grace and sublimity, and instantly, Ontari falls away, subdued and stricken by the expanse of the voice that seems to reach through you into your very soul.

_Lexa…_

Your arms loosen around Clarke and she pulls back, terror etched across her face as you go slack in her arms, but you can’t seem to find your voice to soothe her fears or ignite the connection to Ontari’s body to reach for her hand. You’re careening toward the sound of your name like a crashing down from space, in pieces, undone – and the presence speaks to you again.

 _No nightblood remains,_ it reminds you, voice laced with deep regret, but even more poignant understanding – understanding of your plight, of your love, of your worth. _When Ontari dies – the last nightblood – the Flame dies with her. But the first commander’s spirit must live on._ My _spirit must live on._

 _Her_ spirit.

“The First Commander,” you whisper reverently, eyes fathoms away. Clarke’s breath hitches and her gaze flits across your face; you think she calls your name, but you don’t hear it. The First Commander is speaking to you; _Beca_ is calling your name, and it is like listening to a god. In the abyss, you thought the silence was all there was – memories and silence and the world holding its breath – but you understand now why you never heard her in your mind or in Ontari’s mind before: she _is_ the Flame, and you are defenseless against the power and overwhelmed by the wisdom that resounds from her like the light of a thousand suns.

_You must make it right, Lexa – right, as it once was. Right, as I intended._

Your breath hitches as Beca floods your mind with her memories – images and feelings and moments of the simultaneously darkest and most hopeful era in your people’s history: the very beginning. They are times long-forgotten – rewritten by the survivors of bloody skirmishes and warped by the cruelties sustained in the name of survival, because what Beca shows you is unlike any legends or lessons or likeness of the stories written onto your skin. There _was_ a past commander that offered their people more than just surviving – a commander that was good, and compassionate _,_ and wise – and you recognize her like holding a mirror between you. She speaks to you all the more tenderly when she feels your humble understanding, and you hang on to her every word like you never want to let go.

“The City of Light,” you echo hollowly, soundlessly, mind still turned inward as she whispers her request, laced with impossible promises and fondness and mercy. You nod slowly in understanding. “The Flame.”

Something tugs at you, deep and urgent, and you twitch away from it, mind turning back to Beca for instruction – _speak again, do not be silent –_ but she finishes and falls utterly so, while the world around you grows horribly loud again, a hum, a buzz, a chorused whisper in your mind’s sudden silence. Something pulls at you again – clutching your waist, pulling that tether, and you hear a different voice:

“Lexa!”

 _Clarke_.

You draw yourself away and inhale deeply, resupplying yourself with oxygen you didn’t know you needed, and Clarke floats into your vision, eyes wide and frantic and confused.

“Lexa, please! What’s happening?”

You take her in, and the truth of Beca’s offer falls into place – you can come back. She’s chosen _you_ – the commander so like her, equal in wisdom and compassion and _worth –_ and you have a second chance.

A second chance at a life that was stolen from you. A life with the girl you love.

Wonder and hope washes through you like the light Beca brought to the abyss, and you quickly struggle to sit up, still reeling from the ethereal mind that touched yours. Ontari’s limbs respond to your commands too slowly, but you don’t care: you know it may be the last time you’re forced to command an unfamiliar body.

“Clarke, listen,” you whisper urgently, gripping the hollow of her elbows and holding tight. “There’s a way – Beca spoke to me, and there’s a way for me to come back.”

“What?” Clarke breathes, lips parted and eyes wide.

“In the City of Light, there’s a way to revive a commander from the Flame and their ashes.”

Clarke shakes her head, brow knit with confusion and misery. “That’s – that’s not possible,” she whispers. “Even on the Ark, we didn’t have anything that could do that.”

“On the Ark, you didn’t have Beca,” you return. “She _chose_ me, Clarke,” you add, heart racing and hands tightening in Clarke’s as Beca’s words echo through your mind, laced with hope and passion – _you are worthy, Lexa._ “I can make it right,” you say, swallowing thickly and shouldering the mantle she’s bestowed upon you – so like taking up the commander’s cloak once more.

You will. You _will._

You look up, and your eyes lock with Clarke’s. “Kill Ontari, and I can make it right.”

As though the sound of her name pulls her out of the dark, Ontari slams her mind against yours with a vengeance that instantly banishes the last trace of the sudden peace Beca brought. You cry out and reel back clutching your head.

“Lexa!” Clarke cries.

You push yourself up, but Ontari attacks again, all incoherent shrieking and panicked tearing and feral blows – more ferocious than you’ve ever seen her before, and though you cower beneath it, barely able to stay in the moment, her desperation and pointed will falls into place with a jolt.

She heard.

She _knows_.

Your heart begins to race with urgency, and you clutch Clarke’s hand and pull her close. “You need to kill her,” you hiss, voice is low and pressing. Ontari will not take this chance from you. Not now. Not after everything. There is more than death waiting for you – waiting for Clarke.

“Lexa – ”

“Kill her and take the Flame and my ashes to the City of Light,” you say in a rush as Ontari shakes the ground beneath your feet with her next assault. “Beca will show you the way, and I will be waiting for you.”

Clarke shakes her head frantically, holding tight to your hand. “I can’t – don’t ask me to do this.”

Ontari hacks against your mind, and you feel your walls crumbling, grinding down, piece by piece, second by second –

“Clarke, there’s no time!”

“I can’t kill her knowing you’re there!”

“I will survive this,” you urge, holding on to Beca’s incredible gift. “I promise you.” Clarke’s eyes are wide and afraid, and you pull her close and press your lips to her forehead, imbuing all the hope and certainty that you can into the touch. “Please. You will see me again – _me_ , as I was.”

Clarke trembles against you, and you briefly think she’ll break away, refuse, draw the line at this unbearable thing you’re asking of her – but then, with a soft, conceding sob, she slides her arms around you and tips her face against your lips. You squeeze tight and nod back, marvelling at the feel of her in your arms after weeks spent only watching her from afar, through another’s sight. Even if Clarke fails on the path that you and Beca have set before her, this moment is a gift that you will carry with you until your true death, whenever that may be.

“Close your eyes,” you say softly. “Think of me.”

You feel Ontari battering and beating the edges of your mind, and Clarke feels you quiver with effort to keep her at bay where your lips are pressed against her forehead. She pulls back, eyes filled with tears and fear and grief, but jaw set.

“I’ll see you in the City of Light,” you soothe, tipping your head down to hers.

Clarke swallows thickly, closes her eyes again, and presses her forehead against yours – in this moment, a truer connection than sight.

“I love you,” she whispers, bottom lip trembling.

You ache to echo her, but the sound of Ontari’s voice offers at best a cheap imitation of truth of your words, and at worst, only a reminder of the hate she harbored the girl you love. You swallow back the admission and close your eyes. “When I see you again, it’ll be the first thing I say.”

Clarke nods like she understands.

When you hand her the knife, her hand is steady.

“Count to three,” you say, and lie back, pulling Clarke over you. Clarke swallows thickly, but nods and brings the knife to your throat.

You grip her arms and hold her gaze, and slowly you let your walls down – walls that, seconds ago, Ontari was besieging without mercy. Now, she scrambles back from it, realizing what you’ve done, what she’s coming back to, but the power that tethers body and mind and the pull to reunite them transcends choice and death, and she’s running from the inevitable.

You’re counting on that. On Beca’s promise, for _your_ mind, _your_ body. If she spoke true –

“One.”

You barely hear the count – you’re too focused on the sight of sun-kissed hair and eyes of sky of the girl that you gave up everything for, that showed you love is anything _but_ weakness and life could be about more than just surviving.

You’re ready to prove that now – to live your life in service of those truths and return your people to the ways and pursuits that the First Commander intended for them.

“Two.”

You lift your chin, pull back your mind, and relent control. You hear the last count, feel the yank of separation, and then – with a sharp movement and a jolt – Ontari knows no more.

In the darkness, you hold on to a single name, and the next time you hear it, you’re saying it in your own voice, accompanied by the three words you promised her, and Clarke is smiling at you.

**Author's Note:**

> This was such a challenge! How in the world do you describe the grief, love, and ability to fight of someone who has no body to cry, kiss, or fight with? Damn. I also hope it was also clear why it was necessary to use 2nd person; it is very impractical to have to juggle three (and at the end _four_ ) female pronouns…
> 
> Big thanks to my beta [thedorkone](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thedorkone/pseuds/thedorkone) for her help over the last year or so of writing this! 
> 
> Leave some love! Any comments are appreciated!


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